The garden wants to pave all its trails for easier maintenance and wheelchair accessibility. Photo by Melinda Burns

The neighbors defeated earlier plans in 1990 and 1997, flatly rejecting a proposed parking garage, restaurant, visitor center, events pavilion and pedestrian bridge as incompatible with an exhibition garden of California native plants.

None of these structures appear in the new proposal, which would cost $20 million and take 10 years to fund and build. This time, garden officials say they have listened to the neighbors and come up with a “bare-bones” approach — a near-doubling of the existing floor space to 77,800 square feet. Most of the garden’s buildings would be replaced, enlarged or renovated, including the century-old Gane House.

“What we’re asking for is beyond convenience: it’s a necessity,” Ed Schneider, the executive director, said. “Our plan reflects the dialogue we’ve had with our neighbors over 10 years. We’ve downsized our project, which I think reflects their wishes.”

Paulina Conn, an outspoken garden critic, stands on new paving to the redwood grove. Photo by Melinda Burns

About 106,000 people visit the garden yearly. With the new development, visits would increase by 40 percent over the next 20 years, to 148,000 people yearly.

And just that’s too many, say some members of the Mission Canyon Association and Friends of Mission Canyon. What if there’s a race to evacuate in case of wildfire? they ask. This project, they say, is not at all what they asked for — it's still too big, too urban and too unsafe.

In recent years, some neighbors complained when the garden enlarged the gift shop, paved the meadow trail, redesigned the poppy garden, installed a Japanese teahouse, put up security cameras, padlocked the gates and started charging admission. In response to the garden’s ambitious blueprints for growth, the neighbors successfully pushed for historic landmark status to protect 23 acres.

Now the critics are objecting to the garden’s plans to pave its dirt roads with asphalt, build an asphalt trail on the east side of Mission Canyon Road and pave all the existing dirt trails with pinkish concrete “stones” — a change designed to make the paths easier to maintain and more accessible to wheelchairs.

And they hate the proposal for a chain-link fence around the garden perimeter.

Mary Koenig/SBN

A newly-released Santa Barbara County environmental report on the garden project states that eliminating nearly half the proposed  development, leaving out a new children’s lab and 11 new residences, an asphalt trail on the east side of Mission Canyon Road and the chain-link fence would be an “environmentally superior alternative.”

Less development would be safer because fewer people would be living onsite, the report says. Eliminating the asphalt trail, it says, would cut down on slope erosion. Leaving out the chain-link fence would protect sensitive plants and allow wild animals continued free passage. In addition, 26 of the 50 or 60 oak trees that the garden is proposing to cut down would be saved.

But neither the garden nor its critics like this reduced option. Garden officials say they’ve already proposed the minimum they can get by with. Opponents want the garden to move its administrative offices, lecture hall, rare books and irreplaceable plant collections downtown.

Botanist Dieter Wilken examines a rare plant specimen in the herbarium. Photo by Melinda Burns.

On July 26, county staff planners will take public comment on the report in the Planning Commission hearing room at the County Administration Building, beginning at 6 p.m. The period for public comment closes Aug. 16, and more public hearings will follow.

Garden officials wish their critics would view the garden as they do, as a scientific and educational institution and a museum.

“This is about collection protection,” said Nancy Johnson, the vice president of marketing. “People don’t understand that we grow our collections here. We’re out of space. If we were a park, we wouldn’t need buildings. But we’re not a park. We’ve never been a park.  The garden is the outdoor extension of the work we do.”


“EXTREME FIRE ZONE”

Tim Steele, president of the Mission Canyon Association, is spending a lot of time this tinder-dry summer thinking about fire. It’s foremost on the minds of many other canyon residents, too, as firefighters struggle to get the Zaca backcountry blaze under control.

The garden is located in a “box” canyon: that is, the same road is used for entrance and exit. Fire engines coming in to fight a wildfire would compete for road space with hundreds of people trying to get out.

Fire warnings greet garden visitors on Mission Canyon Road. Photo by Melinda Burns.

“We feel very, very vulnerable right now,” Steele said. “We’re in an extreme fire zone.”

The garden plan would increase the number of visitors at special garden events by 30 percent, or 15,400 per year over the next 10 years, primarily through increases in fundraisers and private parties. Attendance at lectures would increase to 875 yearly, up from 490 now; the project would expand the lecture hall from 70 to 100 seats.

Students attending classes would increase about 20 percent to 5,500 per year. Daily visitors, including the elementary students who take field trips to the garden, are estimated to increase from 290 today to 400 by 2027.

To reduce the risk of fire, the garden is planning to install sprinklers in all its buildings and use fire-safe building materials and fire-retardant roofs. There will be a turnaround for fire trucks.

The 1907 Gane House is proposed to be renovated for administrative offices. Photo by Melinda Burns.

“We believe these enhancements, cumulatively, will bring a greater measure of safety to this canyon with this project,” Schneider, the garden director, said. “There are currently no hydrants at the garden.”

But the environmental report says the water pressure from the city’s water line does not meet county Fire Department standards for the proposed hydrants. It says the garden also should connect to a second city water line on Tunnel Road. It recommends that the garden install smoke sensors and provide a “shelter-in-place” building where visitors and staff could take refuge in a fire. And it says the garden should be evacuated and closed during “red flag” fire alerts.

Steele is not sure whether these precautions, combined with the expansion project, would make the canyon safer or less safe. The association, he said, has hired a consultant to help the group review the plans.

“We would love to have more hydrants in the garden as long as they don’t usurp our safety, in terms of water pressure for our homes,” Steele said. “We’ve got one of the heaviest fuel loads of any neighborhood in California. If water pressure evaporates, our lives are at stake.”


"A UNIQUE PLACE"

In 1926, the creators of the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden said they wanted “to so unite the aesthetic, educational and scientific that this garden will hold a unique place in the horticultural world.”

Today, the garden is one of the few “living museums” accredited by the American Association of Museums and one of only 33 botanic gardens belonging to the National Center for Plant Conservation.

There has been no substantial upgrade in the garden’s buildings since 1972, and some are approaching 50 years old. More than 140,000 dried specimens of California native plants and lichens are housed in an outdated vault — 20,000 of them still uncatalogued for lack of space, off-limits to researchers.

Garden scientists share small offices. Photo by Melinda Burns

“The collection is breathtaking,” said Joan Ariel, the garden librarian. “But it’s frustrating to have to store it in these conditions. There is no room for growth.”

The current proposal includes a new education wing with a new lecture hall and library; a new rare books room; a new herbarium for dried specimens; and a new lab for 10,000 elementary schoolchildren who visit yearly. The rambling, dilapidated Gane House, now used for equipment storage, would become the administration building.

For the first time, there would be a small snack bar on the property. Garden employees would benefit from a net increase of eight housing units on the property, up from four now.

Jane Evans, a garden member since 1991, says she likes the plan because “if you don’t do things, you die.”

“They have run out of places to keep their samples,” she said. “And I feel it’s going to be a safer place if a fire comes.”

Evans said she finds it easier to walk on the paving stones that were recently placed on the trail to the redwood grove.

“There are a number of people who really can’t handle the dirt,” she said. “At times when it was wet, I used to slip very badly.”

Conn, a member of the Mission Canyon Association, disagrees.

“These trails were to be like Native American trails that animals make in the wilderness,” she said.

Chytilo, the lawyer for Friends of Mission Canyon, says the group is disappointed that the environmental report did not more fully examine the idea of using downtown buildings to ease the garden’s overcrowding.

“This is the biggest project ever proposed in Mission Canyon,” Chytilo said. “A facelift is reasonable. Let them do the renovations and expand into the Gane House. But keep the garden as a garden.”

Johnson, the vice president of garden marketing, says, “Other people don’t get to determine our mission.”

By Mary Koenig / SBN